HutchBook.com

HutchBook.com Announcement

Hutchinson Bottle Directory To Be Published
On The Internet

January 4, 2006

When Joe Nagy initiated work on this project almost
30 years ago, there was really only one practical means for delivering
the final product to users: paper. Joe's decade of hard work was
primarily conducted via the U.S. Mail; personal computers, the Internet,
and EMail weren't available tools. Although I have many years of
experience with these powerful tools, in late 2003 when I projected the
time and effort necessary to put the Hutchinson Bottle Directory
together, I made several miscalculations:

I estimated it would
take five years of effort to publish the first edition; it should
turn out to be a 2.5 - 3 year project instead.

We predicted there
were 7,000 - 10,000 different Hutchinson bottles maximum.
Wrong; last week we listed bottle #14,000 and the list continues to
grow! I won't be surprised if we someday reach 15,000 listings.
Given the planned spreadsheet format with illustrations, this many
listings equates to 1,000 - 1,100 paper pages and that means the
book would need to be at least two or possibly three volumes in
length. The associated production costs would push the break even
price far beyond the reach of most collectors, and a Hutchinson
Bottle Directory that collectors can't afford is of no value.

After 32 years of
self-publishing and selling thousands of books, I still love doing
research, gathering and organizing data, and putting it all
together. What I do not enjoy is the printing, collating, binding,
packaging, labeling, mailing, and record keeping. Eliminating
most/all of this distribution hassle means the time saved could be
spent updating the web site and on other writing projects.

Publishing the
Hutchinson Bottle Directory
via paper would provide the collecting community with a "snapshot"
of data at a specific point in time. Unfortunately, hard copy books
do not lend themselves well to updating and the
Hutchinson Bottle Directory
contains data that by its very nature begs to be continually
refined, corrected, and enhanced. Although updated paper pages
could be produced and distributed periodically, doing so is
potentially a logistical nightmare with all of the aforementioned
distribution hassles. By comparison, publishing the Hutchinson
Bottle Directory
via the Internet offers an incredible opportunity to deliver what is
essentially a "living" book! We're all so used to our reference
books having specific publication dates that the concept of
accessing continually updated data is somewhat foreign. Consider
your own reference books that are gathering dust because the data is
outdated and then mull over the idea of a "live" Hutchinson
Bottle Directory;
hopefully you too willbe excited about the Internet as a superior
delivery methodology.

This past summer I
initiated the process of gathering and evaluating information about
alternative ways to deliver the Hutchinson Bottle
Directory.
Publishing via CD ROM was briefly considered, but deemed not practical;
the data is quickly outdated and the process includes most of the
headaches involved with distribution. Publishing to a web site,
however, offered substantial benefits and only a few drawbacks. My
personal expertise at building and maintaining a web site starts/stops
with www.SeattleHistoryCompany.com and constructing a site for the
Hutchinson Bottle Directory
was definitely beyond my skill level. Consequently, I have enlisted the
assistance of a professional web designer whose specialty is database
design. The home page has already been built, and the bottle database
is currently under construction.

The Hutchinson Bottle
Directoryis very much a
collaborative effort. As point guy, my role is to orchestrate and
coordinate the acquisition and organization of the bottle data that has
primarily been supplied by 150+ advanced Hutchinson collector
specialists from across the continent. For several reasons, I have
chosen to "build" the Hutchinson Bottle
Directory
out in the open, frequently providing updates so everyone
involved/interested can follow our progress. I rather enjoy the added
responsibility and pressure of knowing many of my fellow collectors are
closely tracking progress and sharing in the excitement of realizing
that delivery of the Hutchinson Bottle
Directory
data is rapidly approaching. Extending this concept a bit further, we
have reserved www.HutchBook.com and intend to build the book as you
watch. Once the structure is in place, we will move existing data to
the web site, continually add in new listings and data, and incorporate
the illustrations as they are completed. When the
www.HutchBook.com site is up, we will announce its availability.

While testing the waters
on the possibility of publishing to the Internet, I kept track of the
most frequently asked questions and/or concerns expressed by advanced
collectors. Their questions and my responses are detailed below. If you
have questions/concerns that aren't addressed, please EMail or call me.

Ron F.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

HOW MUCH WILL ACCESS TO
WWW.HUTCHBOOK.COM COST?

Access to
www.HutchBook.com will be FREE.
We plan to partially fund the on-going costs of web hosting with web
site advertising. I'm also exploring the development of a Hutchinson
Bottle Collectors Association with a modest annual dues fee that could
be utilized to fund the web site. Watch for more details about this in
weeks to come.

I AM WILLING TO PAY A
FEE TO ACCESS THE WEB SITE; YOU SHOULD CONSIDER CHARGING FOR ACCESS IN
ORDER TO RECOVER YOUR COSTS.

Although I have invested
thousands of hours (I didn't keep track of my time from the 1970s -
1990s), and quite a bit of out-of-pocket cash, from the very get go I
have considered the Hutchinson Bottle
Directory
my contribution back to a hobby I have now enjoyed for 45 years. This
is my ninth book and the best I've done is manage to break even on two
of my previous eight books. Bottle books are not money makers, they are
labors of love!

MANY COLLECTORS DON'T
HAVE COMPUTERS OR INTERNET ACCESS; HOW WILL THEY USE THE HUTCHINSON
BOTTLE DIRECTORY?

I suddenly have a vision
of an Iowa cornfield with a newly built baseball park and a booming
voice saying "If you build it, they will come!" Perhaps the
availability of the Hutchinson Bottle
Directory
via a free web site will inspire a few more folks to finally join the
Internet revolution. These days, most people have access to public
libraries with personal computers that offer Internet access, and almost
everyone has friends and/or relatives who have computers and Internet
access. Play ball!

I WANT A PAPER COPY AND
AM WILLING TO PAY FOR IT. WILL AT LEAST A FEW PAPER COPIES BE
AVAILABLE?

No, we are not going to
print and distribute paper copies. The time saved will instead be
invested into continually updating www.HutchBook.com. The web site will
essentially become each collector's "copy" of the data and they'll have
no need to maintain their own hard copy.

WILL I BE ABLE TO PRINT
WWW.HUTCHBOOK.COM DATA?

Yes, the site will
include "printer friendly" capability and users will be able to print
pages using their own time, electricity, paper, and ink.

MANY COLLECTORS ARE
EXPECTING TO USE A HARD COPY HUTCHINSON BOTTLE DIRECTORY THEY
CAN TAKE TO BOTTLE SHOWS OR WHEN OUT ANTIQUES SHOPPING. DOES PUBLISHING
TO A WEB SITE LEAVE THEM OUT IN THE COLD?

A multi-volume, hard
copy
Hutchinson Bottle Directorywith data on 14,000+
bottles wouldn't be very portable. Including "printer friendly"
capability will allow collectors to easily print selected pages, e.g.
specific states, and this should lessen concerns. Looking further into
the future, even this won't be necessary; envision instead taking a hand
held computer to a bottle show and dialing into www.HutchBook.com to
access totally current data! This technology is available today but it
is still a bit pricey. It's time, however, is coming.

HOW OFTEN WILL CHANGES
BE POSTED TO THE WEB SITE?

I recently performed a
time test with an EMail message containing new bottle data. From the
instant the message arrived up thru the time it took to key the new data
into the website program and upload it to the Internet, a grand total of
only eight minutes elapsed! Another example is a phone call I recently
received from a Pennsylvania collector who had been out digging that
afternoon and within the previous hour found an unknown Pennsylvania
quart Hutchinson bottle. He was excited about his new find and called
to provide data on it. At that point, only the two of us knew about
this newly found bottle, but with an on-line Hutchinson Bottle
Directory,
I could have immediately posted the information to the web site. Just
imagine: that bottle had spent the past 100+ years in the ground and
within two hours of being unearthed the entire collecting world could
know about it! Bottom line: the database will be updated continuously.
Somewhere down the line, I'll pass the torch to younger collectors and
let them bring new enthusiasm and fresh ideas to this initiative.

WILL THE WEB SITE
INCLUDE "SEARCH" CAPABILITY?

By its very nature, the
Hutchinson Bottle Directoryis designed to
facilitate searching in that the listings are organized by country,
state/province, city, and bottler. Beyond that, the web site database
offers search capabilities that would only be available by tediously
pouring thru 14,000+ entries in a hard copy book. In addition to making
all of the Hutchinson Bottle
Directory
data available to the collecting community, I am equally excited about
being able to electronically search and use the data in ways we never
dreamed possible!

IS WEB SITE SECURITY A
CONCERN?

Security is a concern
and the data will be secured so the web designer and I are the only ones
who can manipulate the data. Otherwise, the posted data will be wide
open and available for viewing worldwide, 24 x 7.